Chantilly, VA- Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) today announced that Marie Wilson, Founder and President of the White House Project and co-founder of Take Your Daughters to Work Day, will deliver the conference’s opening keynote, “Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World.”  Shelly Lazarus, Chairman and CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide will close the conference.

Wilson and Lazarus headline a conference that will include sessions on innovation, ethics in decision making, managing multiple generations, women in technology, and the challenges our industry faces in Washington.  Fifty women from Cable World magazine’s Top 50 Women in Cable and Top 50 Women in Technology lists will host a Town Hall Luncheon where each of these recognized leaders host a small roundtable discussion to address their personal development and professional issues.   Attendees will master the knowledge of the cable industry, reinforce their leadership skills and cultivate their management style.  A complete listing of speakers and sessions can be found at www.wictconference.org.

Marie Wilson
Marie C. Wilson is founder and President of The White House Project, co-creator of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work ® Day and author of Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World.
 
In 1998, while President of the Ms. Foundation for Women, Wilson founded The White House Project in recognition of the need to build a truly representative democracy –one where women lead alongside men in politics, media and business. She left the Ms. Foundation in 2004 after two decades, to devote her full energy to the Project.
 
Over the past eight years, under Wilson’s direction, The White House Project has lead ground breaking research and program initiatives like Who’s Talking? in 2001, which highlighted the gender disparity on Sunday morning talk shows, men outnumbered women 9 to 1 as guests; Vote, Run, Lead, in 2000, to engage women in the political process as voters, as activists, and as candidates for political office; and most recently the The Real Security Initiative in 2005, to fundamentally change the landscape of national security debate by equipping women leaders with solid messages and trainings to speak authoritatively around these issues.

Born and raised in Georgia, Wilson has five children and four grandchildren. She resides in New York City.

Shelly Lazarus
Shelly has been working, as she would say it, “In the business I love,” for more than three decades, almost all of that time at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. Shelly started at Ogilvy when the agency’s legendary founder, David Ogilvy, still walked the halls, and preached that the purpose of advertising is to build great brands. David Ogilvy was ahead of his time in his belief that the best way to build brands was to pair big creative ideas with deep consumer insight. But it made sense to Shelly, who had studied psychology as an undergraduate at Smith College and then earned an M.B.A. in marketing from Columbia University (one of only four women in her class). That she would attain the Chairmanship of Ogilvy was certainly not a foregone conclusion given Shelly’s rather unconventional path. After rising through the ranks of account management and playing a pivotal role on many of the agency’s signature accounts — including American Express, Kraft, and Unilever — Shelly took the surprising step of leaving the general agency to become the General Manager for Ogilvy & Mather Direct in the US. Her success there led to positions of increasing responsibility, from President of Ogilvy & Mather Advertising in New York (1991), to President of Ogilvy North America (1994), to Chief Operating Officer and President of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide (1995). She was then named CEO in 1996, and became Chairman in 1997. Most importantly for Ogilvy, those years in Direct cemented her belief in integrated marketing, which has become the backbone of Ogilvy’s 360 Degree Brand Stewardship® philosophy and practice.

Ogilvy’s ability to deliver integrated marketing services is recognized as the driving force behind most of the agency’s commercial success in the last decade, including the huge wins of IBM, Kodak, Morgan Stanley, and DuPont, as global clients. The strength of Ogilvy’s integrated marketing services was also the rationale cited by Advertising Age when it selected Ogilvy as North American Agency of the Year in 2002. All this success has not gone unnoticed. Advertising Women of New York selected Shelly as Advertising Woman of the Year in 1994.

She was honored by Women in Communications with their Matrix Award in 1995, was named Business Woman of the Year by the New York City Partnership in 1996, and the Direct Marketing Association named her Woman of the Year in 2002. She has appeared in Fortune magazine’s annual ranking of the 50 Most Powerful Women in American Business since the inception of the list in 1998. And most recently, Shelly was the first woman to receive Columbia Business School’s Distinguished Leader in Business Award. Shelly serves on the boards of several business, philanthropic and academic institutions, including General Electric; Merck & Co., Inc.; New York Presbyterian Hospital; American Museum of Natural History; Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy; World Wildlife Fund; and on the Board of Overseers of Columbia Business School. She recently ended her five-year tenure as chairman of the Board of Trustees of Smith College; however, she continues as a special representative to that board. She is a member of Advertising Women of New York; the Committee of 200; the Council on Foreign Relations; The Business Council; Women’s Forum, Inc.; and Deloitte & Touche Council for the Advancement of Women. She has also served as chairman of the leading industry trade group, the American Association of Advertising Agencies — one of only two women to do so.

Shelly spends a great deal of time on the lecture circuit, proselytizing for the power of brands, as well as commenting on leadership, women in business, and on career and life issues — something she speaks to from experience as the wife of Dr. George Lazarus, a New York pediatrician, and mother to their three grown children.

2007 WICT Leadership Conference
The 2007 WICT Leadership Conference will be held March 7-8, 2007 at the Hilton New York.  Attendees will learn how to step up to overcome obstacles, strengthen their core leadership skills and industry knowledge and stretch their thinking.  For more information, visit www.wictconference.org.  The 2007 WICT Leadership Conference is presented by Comcast, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., Time Warner Cable, MTV Networks/BET Networks, Charter Communications, NBC Universal, Advance/Newhouse Communications, Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News, Rainbow Media Holdings, LLC, and Lifetime Networks.

About WICT
For over twenty-five years, WICT has partnered with cable and telecommunications leaders to provide leadership programs and services, and create professional advancement opportunities for women. With over 5,000 members, Women in Cable Telecommunications is the oldest and largest professional association serving women in the cable and telecommunications industry. WICT develops women leaders who transform our industry through highly regarded professional events, educational programming and networking opportunities. WICT has 20 local chapters and satellites across the country. For more information, visit www.wict.org.

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